Performance (a selection)

Wax On Rotter

Head on the curve and then

Performance with The Ur Gerauschs' Kammer Ensemble impro quartet on the Art Fair's 'Intersections' section on Art Rotterdam in collaboration with IK Foundation, Vlissingen, NL

Personnel: Heartbeat; Pat Browne / Rhytmic power; Tommy Browne / Spine; Marlon Browne / Wax, vox & unwanted guitar; Jos Browne

The drummer got a trapezium shaped carpet-covered platform to jungle up the Orange Crystal Hollywood drum kit. At the opposite a small cylindrical stage for the guitar player and bassist to play even more closely than they ever did before. And me, I made a little playground for myself, based on earlier pieces such as Leftover-stage. A small desk, some muck ups, props, gas-fires, wax, a massive Marshall amplifier - a 1960 LEAD 4x12" and a 1922 2 x 12" speaker cabinet, the Lemmy signature 100 lead bass amp fired those two out for an hour or so, and really so much other stuff which I wasn’t really clear about what to do with it. The different stages, or platforms if you like, were connected with a small chain, warning signs, purple tube lights and more wax. Once we kicked in with the music I started melting the wax and pouring it over the amp’s cabinets, in and out, all over and under the speakers. We played until the sound got stuck, glued in the hard cold wax. It was a sticky performance on a heavy tune. I burned my head and feet and fingers more than once, lucky to kill the heat with beer, pouring it all over my feet wearing only socks (red socks; afterwards someone called it a poetic move to do the entire performance on socks – it was, but they also got very sticky and didn’t resist the wax dripping through, same counts for my hands, plugging bear bottles in my gloves to give them a little rest, anyway, that’s poetry – according to the Sonic Poets). These kinds of things you better not think about too much while doing them - and definitely not on beforehand - head on the curve and then…! Then what? Well I’d like to thank the audience for their patience, for injecting me, and driving the adrenaline to the right level of performance, they made it worth doing it for sure, and thanks to the band of course, Dan Browne, Ur Gerausch Kammer Ensemble or Sonic Poets, or whatever I always stick a name on us, and so forth, up to the next one.

Wax on, Rotterdam, Intersections as part of Art Rotterdam, February 2015.

JVdM S.P.